13 March 20
“Can't you make do with less.” Another astonishing reader comment. WE ARE MAKING DO WITH LESS! and it hasn't been working. That's the point.
We have been slashing the budget wherever possible for 2 years now. Enough.
Now we fight back.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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13 March 20
Bess Levin | Trump's Top Coronavirus Expert: The President Is Full of Shit
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Excerpt: "According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, nearly everything the president has said about the coronavirus is wrong."
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Excerpt: "According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, nearly everything the president has said about the coronavirus is wrong."
EXCERPT:
omething you may have noticed over the last three years is that Donald Trump’s body apparently requires a certain amount of lies per minute to function, in the same way that normal human bodies require oxygen. Oftentimes these lies are dumb and meaningless, like when he claimed Ivanka created 14 million jobs or that he had a shot with Princess Diana. Other times, they’re significantly more dangerous like, say, when every other word out of his mouth re: a pandemic that has killed over 4,000 people bears little resemblance to the truth. While the president is used to his loyal footstools repeating such lies for fear of offending him, on Wednesday, a member of his coronavirus task force apparently had enough.
Speaking to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted that attempts to downplay how lethal the disease is by comparing it to the flu—which the president did just two days ago—are wildly misguided. “I mean, people always say, ‘Well, the flu does this, the flu does that,’” Fauci said. “The flu has a mortality of 0.1%. This has a mortality of 10 times that. That’s the reason I want to emphasize we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.”
Naturally, Trump’s attempt to use the flu to somehow prove the novel coronavirus isn’t so bad have involved false stats, like that the mortality rate for the flu is “much higher than” COVID-19, and easily debunked lies like that a vaccine is just around the corner. (“It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for,” he said two weeks ago. “And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.”) While Fauci has repeatedly countered that the actual expected timetable is 12 to 18 months, on Wednesday he was more blunt in shutting down Trump’s fantasy timeline. “No,” he said when asked if there was any merit to the president’s assertion that a vaccine might be ready in just a few months. “I made myself very clear in my opening statement.” Elsewhere, Fauci, who has served under six presidents, generally took aim at Trump’s assertion that everything is fine and that the virus will just “go away” on its own. Asked if the worst is yet to come, he responded unequivocally, “Yes, yes it is.”
The good news is that the federal government has finally gotten its shit together, and by gotten its shit together we of course mean can’t even say how many Americans have been tested for the virus:
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday the department does not know how many Americans have been tested for coronavirus and suggested older Americans avoid large gatherings such as campaign rallies…. The availability of test kits to health care providers has been one of the most scrutinized aspects of the federal government's response to the crisis, leading to frustrations from state and local officials, and there has been confusion among Trump administration officials over the number of testing kits that have been mailed out.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, testing revealed that COVID-19 “can live in the air for several hours and on some surfaces for as long as two to three days.” It’s not clear how long the administration has been aware of such information, but perhaps it came up in one of the meetings the White House has reportedly ordered classified, an “unusual” step that CNBC notes “has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion.”
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to the press in Burlington, Vermont, March 11, 2020. (photo: Joseph Prezioso/Getty)
Bernie Sanders' Policies Could Have Saved Us From Coronavirus
Bonny Brooks, The Independent
Excerpt: "Please don't clutch your pearls about 'politicizing a crisis.' This crisis is political."
Bonny Brooks, The Independent
Excerpt: "Please don't clutch your pearls about 'politicizing a crisis.' This crisis is political."
fter more disappointing results for Bernie Sanders’ camp on Mini Super Tuesday, it seems clear that the senator now has almost no chance of winning the Democratic nomination. Swathes of progressives see their dreams in tatters, as a back-to-normal agenda looks set to dominate in the run-up to November (a normalcy that, it must be said, delivered Trump in the first place).
What’s ironic is that the writing on the wall comes precisely when – amid an emerging public health crisis – the case for Bernie’s “not me, us” politics should have played strongest on the national stage. If anything might have made a broad-appeal case for Sanders' platform, coronavirus was it.
Yes, the coronavirus is political. Sanders presumably didn’t make more of the issue because his staff knew that anyone who dared to raise the point would be accused of “cynically politicizing a crisis”. But honestly, in a country with no federal sick leave mandate and no integrated healthcare system, is there anything more political than a public health emergency?
Coronavirus proves that “I got mine” politics takes even its victors only so far. Yes, most people with CoVid-19 will be fine, but they are likely to spread it to many others, too many of whom will not. (Don’t listen to anyone who tells you it’s flu – the fatality rate is currently 3.4 per cent compared with seasonal flu’s 0.1 per cent.) An illness with no cure means that even monied, insured-to-the-eyeballs people can succumb. In fact, pensioners receiving healthcare through Medicare who might otherwise shrug at the plight of the uninsured and underinsured are most vulnerable to coronavirus complications (and are also more likely to vote).
With a threadbare public health response and poorly integrated services, an illness like this can spread quietly but ferociously. We’ve also seen the weakness of the Trump administration’s isolationist policy when weeks ago, the World Health Organization sent testing kits to some 60 nations and the Trump administration declined – insisting that the Center for Disease Control would make its own tests thankyou-very-much.
When the CDC tests did first appear, they were faulty, allowing who-knows-how-many coronavirus cases to slip into the general populace. This is hardly an advertisement for an “America alone” approach.
With no joined-up healthcare system to speak of, coronavirus testing is patchy and mostly privately contracted. Yes, tests conducted by the CDC or a city or state public health lab are free. But these represent only a small proportion of the tests that are needed, and the criteria for them has been so stringent that one sick Seattle man, who had recently returned from Wuhan, didn’t even meet the threshold. When state officials pushed and he was eventually screened, his case was confirmed. A lack of joined-up working among federal departments such as the CDC and FDA has also pushed scientists with ready tests from pillar to post, while the clock ticks.
Add to all these issues the absence of a federal law mandating paid sick leave, and people will be forced to go to work ill, infecting others.
Of course, there is every chance that pointing all this out would not have worked anyway because pearl-clutching about “politicizing tragedy” often lands. But regardless, it was worth a shot for no other reason than it is true. Crises expose weaknesses in systems. To take a flip-side example, in the 1990s when North Korea faced food shortages, its command economy was completely incapable of adequately responding and amid famine the (black) market took over, with entrepreneurial (and often criminal) ingenuity saving many lives. A kind of inverted case can be made here. A crisis that exposes the shared risks every society faces demonstrates the inherent weaknesses in a severely fragmented healthcare system (if one can even call it a ‘system’) and a dearth of sick leave provision. Whether or not you think Sanders could have achieved universal healthcare, someone needs to try.
More than anyone over the last few years, Bernie Sanders has changed the conversation, with his early dominance in the primary forcing more centrist candidates to make more progressive noises on healthcare and taxation. Now, after a Biden beating, progressives await the next phase with sadness and trepidation; especially since there is certainly no guarantee that Biden can beat Trump.
Admittedly, the coronavirus crisis will likely bring the Trump administration and House Democrats thinking closer together than usual, with talks said to be underway between Nancy Pelosi and Steven Mnuchin regarding issues like paid sick leave. But whatever emergency measures are brought in now, the CoVid-19 emergency highlights the inherent weaknesses in an “I got mine” approach to social policy. And with Biden currently offering little more than vague “listen to the experts, folks” platitudes, it’s a shame that Bernie’s agenda will likely be tossed aside by mainstream Democrats.
“Not me, us” politics is about shared destiny, and nothing makes the case for it quite like CoVid-19.
At a rally in South Carolina, Donald Trump sought to link coronavirus to 'the Democrat policy of open borders.' (photo: Leah Millis/Reuters)
Trump's Re-Election Chances Suddenly Look Shakier
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin, The New York Times
Excerpt: "Weeks ago, Trump's advisers were counting on a strong economy and a Democratic opponent easily portrayed as too far left. But the political landscape has sharply shifted."
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin, The New York Times
Excerpt: "Weeks ago, Trump's advisers were counting on a strong economy and a Democratic opponent easily portrayed as too far left. But the political landscape has sharply shifted."
resident Trump faces the biggest challenge yet to his prospects of being re-elected, with his advisers’ two major assumptions for the campaign — a booming economy and an opponent easily vilified as too far left — quickly evaporating.
After a year in which Mr. Trump has told voters that they must support his re-election or risk watching the economy decline, the stock market is reeling and economists are warning that a recession could be on the horizon because of the worsening spread of the coronavirus.
And instead of elevating Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as Mr. Trump made clear was his hope, Democrats have suddenly and decisively swung from a flirtation with socialism to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has run a primary campaign centered on a return to political normalcy.
Chelsea Manning, photographed in Washington, D.C., in January 2018. (photo: Jesse Dittmar/Redux)
Chelsea Manning Ordered Free From Prison - but Will Still Have to Pay Massive Fines
Natasha Lennard, The Intercept
Lennard writes: "On Thursday afternoon, a District Court judge in Virginia ordered that Chelsea Manning be released from jail, where she has been held since last May for refusing to testify before a grand jury."
READ MORE
Natasha Lennard, The Intercept
Lennard writes: "On Thursday afternoon, a District Court judge in Virginia ordered that Chelsea Manning be released from jail, where she has been held since last May for refusing to testify before a grand jury."
READ MORE
A man walks his dog past the New York Stock Exchange soon after the U.S. Stock Market took a 2,000-point plunge in early trading. (photo: Anthony Behar/AP)
The Trump Administration Will Move Ahead With Its Plan to Kick People Off of Food Stamps Despite the Coronavirus Outbreak
Paul McLeod, BuzzFeed
McLeod writes: "The Trump administration is moving ahead with its plan to enact strict work requirements on people who use food stamps despite the coronavirus pandemic - a move that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing their eligibility for the program."
READ MORE
Paul McLeod, BuzzFeed
McLeod writes: "The Trump administration is moving ahead with its plan to enact strict work requirements on people who use food stamps despite the coronavirus pandemic - a move that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing their eligibility for the program."
READ MORE
The isolation department at Haifa's Rambam Medical Center, on Monday, March 9, 2020. (photo: Rami Shllush)
Israeli Research Center to Announce It Developed Coronavirus Vaccine, Sources Say
Ido Efrati and Chaim Levinson, Haaretz
Excerpt: "Scientists at Israel's Institute for Biological Research are expected to announce in the coming days that they have completed development of a vaccine for the new coronavirus COVID-19."
READ MORE
Ido Efrati and Chaim Levinson, Haaretz
Excerpt: "Scientists at Israel's Institute for Biological Research are expected to announce in the coming days that they have completed development of a vaccine for the new coronavirus COVID-19."
READ MORE
Spruce grouse. (photo: Nick Jans)
Federal Court Rules Against Massive Old-Growth Rainforest Logging Plan in Alaska
National Audubon Society
Excerpt: "A federal judge rejected yesterday an enormous commercial timber harvest and road-building plan for Prince of Wales Island in the Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska."
National Audubon Society
Excerpt: "A federal judge rejected yesterday an enormous commercial timber harvest and road-building plan for Prince of Wales Island in the Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska."
Decision is a Win for Subsistence Hunters and Families on Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island
The judge ruled that project approval violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which sets standards for public engagement on federal projects that will alter the environment, and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which requires federal agencies to evaluate how federal use of public lands will affect subsistence uses and needs. The court found that the Forest Service “presented local communities with vague, hypothetical, and over-inclusive representations of the Project’s effects over a 15-year period.” It’s not yet clear whether the Forest Service will have to abandon the project entirely, because the judge has not yet decided on a legal remedy. Read the court ruling.
The U.S. Forest Service had green-lighted a sweeping 15-year logging scheme over a 1.8-million-acre project area across Prince of Wales and surrounding islands, part of a program dubbed the Prince of Wales Landscape Level Analysis. While the plan also included restoration and recreation projects that plaintiffs were supportive of, the lawsuit specifically challenged logging and road-building. It would have been the largest timber sale on any national forest in 30 years, allowing for 164 miles of new road construction and the logging of enough trees to equal a forest three times the size of Manhattan, or 67 square miles. More than half the planned logging acres would have targeted old-growth trees, which are uniquely effective at absorbing the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, and in many cases have been standing for centuries.
Eight conservation organizations, represented by the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice, challenged the logging plan on the grounds that, among other claims, it had violated the National Environmental Policy Act, which gives people a say in government actions that will affect their communities. Prince of Wales Island is prized for its subsistence hunting and fishing opportunities, yet the Forest Service failed to provide detailed information about where logging would occur. This made it impossible for subsistence hunters, local residents, and others who care about the wildlife and forests of Prince of Wales Island to meaningfully weigh in on the plan.
Plaintiffs in this case include the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Alaska Rainforest Defenders, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Alaska Wilderness League, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Audubon Society, and Center for Biological Diversity. Prince of Wales residents, attorneys, and plaintiffs released the following statements in reaction to the ruling:
“This is a huge win for wildlife, climate, and all people’s voices on the most biologically diverse and vulnerable island on the Tongass National Forest, said Natalie Dawson, executive director of Audubon Alaska. “This ruling protects ancient forests that are crucial to mitigating climate change impacts in Alaska and across the globe.”
"What the court order cuts short, at least for now, is flagrant attempts by the Forest Service to trample not only the remaining old-growth forest on Southeast Alaska's most heavily-logged major island, but also NEPA, which is America's bedrock law for protecting the environment from contrived decision-making," said Larry Edwards of the regional organization Alaska Rainforest Defenders.
"The Prince of Wales project would’ve been the largest logging project that we have seen anywhere in our national forests in decades, and it would have destroyed thousands of acres of irreplaceable old-growth forest in the Tongass National Forest,” said Kristen Miller, conservation director at Alaska Wilderness League. “Today’s ruling is a win for Southeast Alaska's billion-dollar fishing and tourism industries, and a reminder as the Trump administration tries to significantly weaken the National Environmental Policy Act of the critical role NEPA plays in allowing the public to meaningfully weigh in on issues impacting their public lands.”
“Protecting the Tongass from old-growth clearcuts shouldn’t feel like a guessing game where Alaskans are left in the dark about whether the clear cuts will be on their traditional lands, in their favorite hunting spot, or in the middle of a stunning Alaskan viewpoint,” said Meredith Trainor, Executive Director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. “Today’s court decision upholds the rights of Southeast Alaskans to weigh in on where logging happens. We’re grateful NEPA continues to stand strong and tall, like our old-growth trees, today.”
“This is a victory for wildlife, for our precious public forest lands, and for the rule of law,” said Patrick Lavin, Alaska policy advisor, Defenders of Wildlife. “This decision protects thousands of acres of high quality fish and wildlife habitat and the sustainable industries that rely on it. It also upholds the public’s right to basic information about proposed uses of our national forests, and the impacts of those uses on our shared public resources.”
“The magnificent, ancient forests of the Tongass just got a reprieve from the chain saws,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re thrilled the court agreed that the Trump administration broke the law when it approved cutting thousands of acres of old-growth trees. It’s critical to protect our remaining old-growth forests to have any chance of stopping the extinction crisis and slowing climate change.”
“This ruling is a win for old-growth forests, deer, wolves, and people on Prince of Wales Island,” said Earthjustice attorney Tom Waldo. “Subsistence hunters and other residents can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that a massive industrial logging operation isn’t imminent in the forested areas they know and rely upon.”
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